Chapter 6

CHAPTER6

“Isuppose you have come to gloat or blackmail me? But if you think I shall consider you because you believe yourself to be my very last option, you may think again!” a familiar voice burst into the stuffy study, at the same moment that the door swung wide open.

Sprawled across the wingback chair that the Marquess of Tillington had spent hours occupying, judging by the dent in the leather seat, Adam could not resist a smirk as the mysterious Lady of the Lake blustered in… and immediately had all the wind taken out of her sails. Her eyes widened to the whites, her mouth falling open, just as it had done on that fateful night.

Clearly, he was not whom she had been expecting.

“I would close your mouth for you, but you might keel over again,” Adam teased, and not a moment too soon, for the girl’s father had just walked in.

Adam sat up a little straighter, though he made no move to vacate the Marquess’s chair. “Good afternoon to you, Swinton. I must say, it has been a long while since our paths have crossed, has it not?”

“It has, Your Grace,” Nicholas replied stiffly.

“None of that nonsense, Swinton,” Adam insisted. “Robins shall do just fine.”

Nicholas sniffed. “No, I rather think that Your Grace will suffice, considering the situation we are in.”

“As you prefer.” Adam shrugged, concentrating on Nancy. She had not said another word, her lips pressed tightly together. “I hope your silence does not mean you are preparing to punch me again?” He had meant it in jest, but no one seemed amused. “Goodness, must we all be so very serious?”

Nicholas sat down in the opposite chair and slammed his fist down on the desk. “Yes, Your Grace, we must all be so very serious because of what you have done. Indeed, we were just thinking of ways we could seek you out, for I would have wagered good money—if I were still a betting man—that you had gone into hiding.”

“Then, should you not be glad, for I have spared you the effort?” Adam smiled, unable to resist the particular pleasure that goading others brought him.

Nicholas shook his head. “I am in no position to judge the antics of other gentlemen, Your Grace, but you have involved my daughter in this instance, and, as such, you must speak the truth of what happened. You must save her, Your Grace.” He gestured to Adam’s nose. “Looking at you, I can see that Nancy’s account was honest.”

“And painful,” Adam quipped. “You will be pleased to hear that you did not manage to break my nose, Lady Nancy, but I shall wear this fetching bruise for a week or so.”

Nancy’s eyes widened even further, to the point where Adam feared they might bulge right out of her exquisitely beautiful face. “How… do you know my name?”

“Have you not seen the scandal sheets?” Adam replied. “Our names are entwined there, dearest Nancy, as they have never been entwined in reality.”

Nicholas slammed his fist down again. “Enough of that, Your Grace! You will not speak coarsely or uncouthly while you are in this manor. Is that understood?”

“Ooh, I thought my father had risen from the dead for a moment there.” Adam chuckled, pretending to shudder. “But fair is fair. I shall behave. Indeed, I mean no harm at all in coming here. Quite the opposite.”

Right up until the sun had risen that morning, Adam had warred with himself over how to proceed. Nicholas had been right to assume that he would go into hiding, for that had been his plan, and arrangements had already been put in place for him to reside at Harry’s winter cottage until the fuss died down.

But a sharp voice in Adam’s mind had other ideas, whispering “coward” at every opportunity. His conscience, perhaps, though he had not realized he still possessed one. And that voice would have plagued him, he knew, if he had not changed his mind at the last moment.

“Whatever do you mean?” Nicholas asked while Nancy padded over to the bookshelves, keeping her back to Adam as she thumbed the worn spines.

To Adam’s disappointment, it appeared there would be no repeat of their fiery banter the other night.

“I will not lie to you, Swinton. I intended to flee, as any gentleman in my position might,” Adam began, admiring the elegant curve of Nancy’s neck and the semi-circle of bare skin at the nape, where the top edge of her dress had been cut quite daringly. “The trouble is—and you will forgive me for being coarse for a moment—the situation is not my usual situation if that makes a jot of sense?”

Nicholas nodded. “I believe so.”

“Your daughter did no wrong. I cannot deny that the story was a thrilling one, and likely had many a heart racing across the country, but not a word of it was true. She is innocent and entirely undeserving of what was written about her, in more ways than one.” Adam tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. “I am wholly to blame, and worse still, I was unable to catch the cretin who spilled these vile lies to the scandal sheets,” he went on, hardly able to believe that he was about to say what needed to be said. “If I had captured him, none of this unpleasantness would have befallen your daughter.”

“If you had been raised properly, none of this would have happened,” Nancy finally shot back, biting at the last morsel of bait on the hook. “If you were not a woefully improper gentleman, none of this would have happened. There are many reasons why none of this would have happened, and Mr. Colby is just one tiny part.”

Adam nodded. “He is rather small, but most rats are.”

“You realize that an apology to just my father and I will do nothing, do you not?” Nancy folded her arms across her chest, drawing Adam’s eyes to her ample bosom.

Even simply attired, with bruised half-circles beneath her eyes and a disheveled appearance, she was astonishingly beautiful. Unfairly beautiful, in truth, for who had any right to look remarkable when their life was in the midst of crumbling to dust?

Adam laughed. “Of course. If I intended to offer just an apology, I would have written a note and sent flowers with it, wishing you all the best in the barren wilderness of your imminent spinsterhood.”

“Your Grace!” Nicholas growled a warning, but Adam could not relinquish his humor, not if he was going to endure what came next.

“What I mean to say is,” Adam continued, more carefully, “I am not here to merely offer an apology. If you were one of my… distractions, you would understand the rules and consequences and risks, for they are things that I make abundantly clear before… Well, we need not discuss the minutiae of that.”

His throat had tightened, his heart beating out of rhythm, his stomach twisting into anxious knots as he approached a verbal precipice. It was obvious that he was trying to buy himself some time, and judging by the deep creases upon Nicholas’s brow, the older man had an inkling of what Adam was about to say. And he appeared to be as surprised by the possibility as Adam felt.

“In a nutshell, I cannot let you take any part of the fall for this,” Adam said, clearing his throat. “And so, I should like to do the proper thing, though you deem me the very pinnacle of impropriety.”

Nicholas leaned all the way forward in his chair, his eyes bulging. “The proper thing?”

“Indeed.” Adam gulped. “I am here to make an offer of marriage to Lady Nancy.”

A shiver ran through him, the knots in his stomach melting into balls of acid that bubbled and popped, his thigh jigging up and down with the nerves he could not displace. He had said it now. The proposal was out of his mouth and into the world, where it could not be taken back. Not unless he wanted to make an even greater wretch of himself, anyway.

What am I doing?

Half of his mind screamed while the other half applauded.

It was Harry’s fault, really. After Adam and Harry had left the ball, amidst the first wave of whisperings about what might or might not have occurred in the gardens, they had gone to a nearby inn to drink themselves into a fresh stupor.

Adam had explained the events to his dearest friend, and Harry, filled with the wisdom of strong liquor, had declared, “Why, then you must marry her! She is the exception, my good man!”

Adam had asked, “The exception? What do you mean?”

“You have always said that if you ever made a mistake, you would do the honorable thing,” Harry had slurred in reply. “I rather think this is the most catastrophic mistake you have ever made. So, it must be the exception. You must take responsibility, old boy!”

Adam had tried to insist that he was referring to children of the illegitimate kind, of which he had, thankfully, sired none. But Harry had been too inebriated to accept the nuances, continuing to cry out for the “Lake Lady’s” justice. And though they were just the ramblings of a drunken fool, forgotten by Harry when the morning had come, they had lodged in Adam’s skull like shards of glass.

I cannot be cowardly. She must be the exception, for it is all my fault.

He was awaiting some kind of response from either Nicholas or Nancy. Both had paled, and both seemed to have lost their ability to speak.

“Should I say it louder? In French, perhaps?” Adam mustered a laugh, but it rang hollow.

Nancy shook her head. “A proposal is not necessary,” she squeaked. “All you need to do is announce the truth and use your bruise as evidence. Explain the misunderstanding. As you have never asked for a redaction for any of your previous… indiscretions, it ought to be believed.”

“Who suggested that to you?” Adam softened his tone, noticing the fear in her eyes and the tremor in her voice.

Nancy pointed to the door. “My brother-in-law.”

“Has he ever been a rogue like me?”

“No, but Society once speculated that he killed his brother and father,” Nancy replied, moving to a nearby chair to sit down. Her legs could no longer hold her up, it seemed.

Adam smiled. “Then he does not understand the nature of these things. If I ask for the truth to be published, it will read as doubly guilty. Society will think that I have been coerced or blackmailed into it, not realizing that everything I could be blackmailed with has already been published in the scandal sheets.” He chuckled lightly, hoping his levity might ease her stress. “What I am saying is, it will not work. My marrying you is the only way to shield you from ruin.”

Believe me, I have contemplated every possible alternative since the moment I told you to depart Bainton Manor immediately.

But he didn’t voice that thought, for he did not want her to think he had thought about her too often since their last fateful encounter.

“That cannot be,” Nancy whispered, breathing hard. “Father, that is not true, is it? There is… another way, is there not?”

Adam was accustomed to hearing that sort of desperation in the opposite fashion, bombarded with shrill pleas for him to marry whoever was pleading, or for him to at least be faithful—a cavalier servente, loyal to one married woman who was not his wife. So, it bemused him somewhat to hear Nancy begging to avoid a union that would make her a duchess.

“Nancy, I think this is your only—” Nicholas began to say when the study door blew open and a horde of infuriated ladies barreled in.

“Excuse us,” said a woman with a rounded belly as she muscled through the study and grabbed Nancy’s hand. “Nothing is being decided without discussion.”

Adam shrugged. “Discuss whatever you desire, for as long as you please. It will not change the state of things.” He got up and went to the chair that Nancy had vacated, picking up the papers she had dropped. “The words written in here are like a curse or a contagion for women. It spreads quickly through Society and does not relent, lingering for decades. It does not matter what is said now, by me or by anyone else. This is what the tonwill choose to believe. Actions, however, have power, but only if we act swiftly. So, either I can save Lady Nancy from ruin, or she can wait for someone else to offer marriage.”

“Someone else?” Nancy finally met his gaze.

He gave her a pointed nod, hunching over and pulling the most grotesque face he could. “The fellow you thought had already arrived to make his offer,” he said. “I imagine he would not hesitate.”

For a moment, Nancy looked like she might be sick. “I need a moment.”

“Take a hundred,” Adam replied. “I have nowhere else to be.”

The pregnant lady flashed him a disapproving scowl as she led Nancy out of the study, flanked by the rest of her family. Only Nicholas did not follow, frozen in the chair opposite Adam, like a hesitant investor trying to decide whether or not to scratch his signature upon a contract or leave before he coughed up a single coin.

It is more or less the same.

Adam drummed his fingertips on Nicholas’s varnished desk. “You know what will become of her if she does not agree,” he reasoned, smiling sadly at him. “I am not known for my altruism, that is true, but I have no selfish motive in this proposal. I only wish to make amends. She can keep the entirety of her dowry, to do with as she pleases. And after a year or two has passed, to make it seem like a believable union, she can even return to live here if she wants. Indeed, I suspect she will be freer with me than she would be with anyone else.”

Nicholas raised his gaze, and with it, he extended his hand toward Adam. “There is no other choice,” he said grimly. “I would protect her, however I can, and if that means entrusting you with her, then so be it. But if you harm her, if you hurt her, if you break her, I will personally remove a part of you that you will assuredly miss.”

Adam smirked. “And I believe you.” He leaned forward, closing his fingers around Nicholas’s hand. “But think of it, Swinton. From a household without sons, and no illegitimate ones either, you have managed to make both your daughters into duchesses. If that is not undeservedly good fortune, I do not know what is.”

“There is one difference,” Nicholas said, gripping Adam’s hand as if he meant to break it off. “My son-in-law is not like me and you. He is good and loyal and would do anything to ensure Joanna’s happiness.”

Adam squeezed back just as hard. “Yet, you have managed to change. Perhaps I shall too.”

“We both know that is not possible,” Nicholas said, swallowing thickly.

Growing weary of the encounter and the bravado, Adam narrowed his eyes. “I am confused, Swinton. Are you accepting the offer or rejecting it? I must warn you, if it is refused today, it will not be offered again.”

It is a miracle I am offering it at all.

Nicholas relaxed his hand, beginning to shake Adam’s in a more polite fashion. “I am accepting,” he replied. “She might resent me for a while, but I know she will thank me later, when she finds she can still enjoy everything that used to delight her, without fear of being shunned. Nothing would pain me more than seeing her truly suffer Society’s wrath.”

“I quite agree.” Adam forced a smile, the handshake making everything all too real.

Over and over, his mind hissed, “This is insanity. Take it back. Flee this place and never return.”

“But this does not make us friends,” Nicholas added in a darker voice. “Your inability to be discreet has caused this and, as a result, stolen so much from her. For that, there shall be no forgiveness, for I do not trust you and I shall not trust the weight of this handshake until I have seen my daughter married to you.”

Adam nodded. “Wise. But you have nothing to fear, for I intend to hold true to my word.”

Though I have not the foggiest notion of why…

That was not entirely true, for layered on top of Harry’s drunken words and Adam’s own remorse, there was another motivation, far older and more ingrained than anything else. A woman. A woman who had once been where Nancy was, with a far less favorable outcome.

Adam’s mother. She would have wanted him to do the right thing, and, for once, he did not want to disappoint her.

“Father?” a small, frightened voice whispered from the study doorway. Nancy’s eyes were fixed on the entwined hands of the two men. “Father… no. What have you done?”

Even Adam felt a little guilty, for that was no way for Nancy to find out that she was going to be married off to the very person who had gotten her into this mess in the first place. Soon, too, for with the rumor mill churning against them, they could not afford to delay.

“What I must, my darling girl,” Nicholas replied thickly. “What I must.”